Sunday, October 16, 2016

FrontPage Mag Says "Hello" to San Francisco State University

David Horowitz's FrontPage Magazine has a piece entitled, San Francisco State: A Haven for Supporters of Terrorists.
Whatever anyone might say about Horowitz he definitely does not pull punches. I always think of the guy as a general marshalling his troops and setting them forth to ideological warfare. But I feel reasonably certain that he, himself, would agree with that assessment.

Last night, the David Horowitz Freedom Center brought its Stop the Jew Hatred on Campus poster campaign to San Francisco State University, a campus that is notorious for its glorification of anti-Israel terrorism and anti-Semitism...

The posters are part of a larger Freedom Center campaign titled Stop the Jew Hatred on Campus which seeks to confront the agents of campus anti-Semitism and expose the financial and organizational relationship between the terror group Hamas and Hamas support groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine. As part of the campaign, the Freedom Center has placed posters on several campuses including San Diego State University, the University of California-Irvine and the University of California-Los Angeles. The campaign also recently released a report on the “Top Ten Schools Supporting Terrorists” which may be found on the campaign website, www.StoptheJewHatredonCampus.org. San Francisco State University is among the campuses listed in the Top Ten report.

I do not know what effect this kind of "guerrilla politics" will have on the way people think about either the rise of Political Islam or the Arab-Israel conflict, although it may get a few people talking on that campus... either that or they will ignore the whole thing entirely.

One or the other.

My guess is that many Jewish students at SFSU will roll their eyes and turn away. Some will want to keep their head down out of fear for their social standing. Others will feel a degree of relief in recognizing that at least some people genuinely are pro-Israel and pro-Jewish, even if it does come from the much berated American right-wing. And maybe there will even be a few other Jewish students inspired to stand up and organize on behalf of their own people.

We shall see.

I feel a strong connection to this story in part because I am an alumnus. It is also because the university put up a mural of Edward Said, one of the most prominent anti-Semites working in academia in the United States during the twentieth-century.

The first is that Jewish parents who send their kids to that university should know that if their kids keep their heads down they'll be just fine. When I was there at the end of the 1990s, I honestly did not care that much about Israel and I had a terrific university experience at SFSU.

Of course, there was the day where I witnessed a bunch of black students holding up a poster with an American flag wherein the stars were replaced by 50 little Stars of David. That was a sort-of "wake up call" but all it elicited from me was a strongly worded letter to the editor. As I recall, the letter was not so much about condemning the poster itself, as it was about its potential for alienating Jewish students from left-leaning coalitions.

The second caveat is that this is obviously not a distinct SFSU problem. Sure, SFSU is prominent among American universities in its advancement of hatred toward the Jewish State of Israel - and thus inevitably toward Jews, in general - but it is hardly alone.

The current ongoing kerfuffle around SFSU is primarily about the rise of an anti-Israel / anti-Jewish political culture on that campus nurtured by, among others, Professor Rabab Abdulhadi, faculty advisor to the General Union of Palestine Students (GUPS) and Associate Professor of "Race and Resistance Studies."

Most recently even Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Studies Forum has written about SFSU anti-Semitism, so the broader story appears to have legs.

For me it started with the guy below, Mohammad G. Hammad, former president of GUPS, holding his trusty blade back in 2013:

If you are reading this it is fairly likely that the face above may look familiar. Mr. Hammad posted the photo above on his Tumblr page with this message:

I seriously can not get over how much I love this blade. It is the sharpest thing I own and cuts through everything like butter and just holding it makes me want to stab an Israeli soldier…

That was the moment that I got hooked on the story, mainly out of well-founded concern that the university - while expelling an advocate for outright murder in Mr. Hammad - would nonetheless continue to support GUPS even as members of GUPS call for Intifada which is nothing less than a call for the genocide of the Jews in the Middle East.

This is what must be understood by university administrators around the country. When students cry out for Intifada they are crying out specifically for Jewish blood and university administrators from around the country (and Europe, and Australia) need to account for why they are just dandy with student calls for genocide.

Someone like Jerusalem mayor, Mir Barkat, must have an amazingly strong stomach to endure hate-filled students screaming in his face for his own murder as we saw last spring when he was invited by the local Hillel to speak on campus.

The man got ambushed.

Then, of course, we have Abdhuladi's attempt to normalize anti-Jewish hatred on university campuses though her successful efforts to partner SFSU with that "greenhouse" for Jihadis, An-Najah University in Nablus.

And finally - for the moment - there was the Edward Said mural festivities that featured GUPS members, and others, holding aloft signs calling for the murder of "colonizers." I do not know about you, but when Arab or Muslim students from organizations like GUPS - or, say, the Muslim Student Association, or, say, Students for Justice in Palestine - hold aloft signs calling for the killing of "colonizers" my guess is that they are not referring to the Polish. On the contrary, I get the sneaking feeling that they may be discussing my friends and relatives in places like Haifa, Tel Aviv, and Jerusalem.

In any case, stay tuned because as long as the President of San Francisco State University can say, as President Wong did not so long ago, that "GUPS is the very purpose of this great university" then Jewish people associated with that campus, if they care about Israel and their fellow Jews, have a fight on their hands whether they like it or not.

My first recommendation is to encourage Jewish SFSU donors to divert their generous offers to AMCHA or Campus Watch, rather than to an openly anti-Semitic university.

My next recommendation is to keep a close eye on the writings and investigations of:

I don't think that any of us are much in the mood to allow this virulent hatred of Israel and Jews - based on lies, misinformation, and propaganda - to continue without response.

What we need, however, is for the mainstream press to pick up the larger story of the camouflaging of campus anti-Semitism under a veil of anti-Zionism and drive it home to the peoples of North America, Europe, and Australia.

25 comments:

The posters will get noticed, have no doubt. But unlike the homunculus with the knife, the Jews have a strong prohibition against murder, and do not generally engage in murderous threats. This renders them with a built-in disadvantage in winning the "affections" of much of the current western elite.

Horowitz does these kinds of things. It gets him publicity and reactions which he uses in his speeches at various other universities and other forums. If you're talking about anything positive coming about on the campuses with the posters, there is little chance. It is a tactic to motivate conservative youths in college. If you go on youtube and watch some of his speeches you'll know what I mean. I once saw him once speak at Berkeley out of shear curiosity (I had never heard of him before that). He is an interesting fellow with an interesting history to say the least.

what I find interesting about Horowitz is the same thing that I find interesting about Tammy Bruce or, say, Phyllis Chesler, or any number of people who started in one political space and then thought their way through it.

They're both apostates, in other words.

I've been referencing Tammy Bruce a lot recently because I've only just now become aware of her existence. She's a former NOW director out of the LA office who currently self-identifies as a pro-choice, feminist, lesbian, conservative.

I don't think it gets much more transgressive than that.

But she was writing 10 years ago and I assume she's still doing her radio show.

In any case, she, like Horowitz - and like both of us, along with millions of others - thought her way past the acceptable boundaries of discussion within her ideological-political home.

I don't know much about SFSU, but I'll take your word for it. But something far more nefarious is going on, Donald Trump blaming "International Bankers" for all the problems in America. We all know who the International Bankers are. I said before, and I'll say it again, when where there is bigotry against Moslems, immigrants and blacks, Jews are never far behind (usually ahead). I don't think that Trump is actively anti-semitic, but he traffics with those that are. So at this point, those for Trump trust the future of Jews to actual Nazis as opposed to Hillary. And it is clear, from the writer from Newsweek, that Trump is working with the Russian government, so those who favor Trump trust Russia with Israel's future, rather than Hillary. Just what exactly would Trump have to do for people to recognize how much better Hillary would be? Wear a swastika? Scream, "Sieg Heil?" Something else? What else?

Here are the facts: America allows 800,000 legal immigrants a year. 10,000 are Syrian refugees who undergo 18 -24 months of vetting. Our population is 350 million. We should allow a 1% immigration rate, which would be three and a half million. Hillary's increase would be minuscule. And again, hatred of immigrants inevitably leads to hatred of Jews.

I don't think anyone here hates immigrants. I think that is a diversion and you should rethink it. People are rightly worried about the rise of a violent political movement, and a virulently antisemitic one at that, and its spread westward. Broad brushing people who have legitimate concerns for their own safety and the security of their neighbors as "haters" is grievously unfair and likely to cause a backlash which in turn causes hatred which causes hatred of Jews. (Are their any social, political or economic upheavals that haven't caused hatred of Jews? ) Isn't the rise of political, radical Islam causing hatred of Jews in the West? (Yes.) If there were no danger coming our way via the M.E. you wouldn't need to pass through security checks at the airport. There would be no Fort Hood, Boston Marathon bombing, San Bernardino, and about 60 gay people would still be alive, not to mention 3,000 or so more from 9/11. Our way of life is being challenged and the calls to "get used to it," and "it has nothing to do with Islam" are a sellout of our basic freedoms, intelligence, and moral. For all your ad nauseam talking points about Trump, it is easy for someone to come back and say how Hillary Clinton is surrounded by Israel haters. Don't get me wrong, I find Trump loose lipped, irresponsible, and in need of classes in civics and sensitivity training. But it would be easy to talk about how she panders to Bernie voters. Bernie is the "good Jew" who rails against the big banks, and you know who controls them, huh? Or how she has throughout her career been all over the political map. Or how she was an enabler for her husband's sexcapades for the promise of political power. And on top of it all there is the media and the Democratic Party whose attacks on Trump have exceeded those against other recent GOP nominees only in degree, not in kind, i.e., they all get the same treatment. (I am not a Republican.) But when all one can muster is "you're a racist," you're a sexist," "you're a homophobe," in place of serious arguments about policies, i.e., will work better and why, what we have are convenient shortcuts to political power through condemnation and demonization, and not democratic governance resulting from an informed consent. I find that of the gravest concern. I asked you a few times for the evidence that supports your contention that Hillary Clinton would be the most pro-Israel president ever in the milky way galaxy. I'm still waiting.I'm sorry if all this sounds harsh, but I do respect you.

There is no way to tell which president has been better than Hillary would be for Israel.

However, no previous Secretary of State has been quite so enamored of the so-called "Palestinian narrative" as Clinton is under Obama.

No President of the United States or Secretary of State has been so insistent that Jews be allowed to live in certain places, but not others, within the Jewish homeland.

In this way, both Hillary and Obama verify the narrative of perpetual Arab victimhood through the clear implication that Jewish people have essentially stolen land that rightfully belongs to Arabs.

Furthermore, of course, Hillary and Obama are both friendly with Jihadist organizations like the Brotherhood and therefore cannot be trusted on the issue of Political Islam and its implications for the question of immigration.

For me, tho, it's not just about Israel.

It's about universal human rights.

It's about standing up for Gay people and women and Yazidis and Copts under the boot of al-Sharia, as well as standing up for the Jewish state as it continues to weather ongoing aggression by the much larger majority population in the region.

It's also about getting the Left to understand that when they ignore or justify the abuses to millions of ordinary people under the rule of Islamist regimes that they are betraying their very own core values.

Joseph, I think they all knew that Israel would make concessions, but the Arabs won't. So if you want "peace" go after the Jews to make concessions. They're the conciliatory party, and if they decide not to make concessions then the lack of peace is their fault and an insult to the peace processors. Getting Arafat to say he recognized Israel was considered some monumental feat. Of course, what he and the PLO mean by recognition vs. what it means in typical diplomatic parlance are quite different things that have been glossed over because they are not the conciliatory party and therefore not expected to be. I could go on.

Why Krav Maga just for the kiddies? How about for adults AND even for people 40+. In fact, I am teaching a seminar (along with another gent who is a black belt in the Korean Martial Art of Kook Sool) and an Israeli Krav Maga school owner in the next few weeks. I highly recommend Krav for everyone. It is, as Imi Lichtenfeld said "So that one my walk in peace": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imi_Lichtenfeld

All is well - thanks! It's always a good time to learn Krav though. Even at our "advanced" age ;-)The guy I am doing our seminar with is 59 and can kick above my head (and I am 6'). Now, I can't do that but...

I agree with you though... on today's campuses knowing how to defend yourself is important. Not just from potential political issues but also just for general safety

All any of you are debating is what already happened. You should focus on what's next. When a mob really does murder a Jew on campus or the Hillel really is firebombed, or a motion to ethnically cleanse the campus of all Jews narrowly escapes passage, or when or if there really is a No-Jew Pledge that all enrolling students have to make or when students successfully get teachers fired for no other reason than they're Jewish, or not even Jewish, just of Jewish ancestry, or a class that asserts the Holocaust did not happen and that Jews don't exist as identifiable group and maybe just maybe the wrong side lost WW2, is created......

Still going to munch your brie and raise a toast to your own evolution and sophistication? Still going to quibble about whether your own beliefs are fair and reasonable enough?

And maybe none of that will occur. Stay asleep at the wheel and let us know how it turns out. Because we already have a pretend government that's not functional. We already have a media that's not a free press. We already are poised on the edge of economic disaster. When all those things collude in a few years under the Hillary regime, who do you think is going to catch it in the neck? Black people? The illegal Mexicans? No. think again.

Barack Obama on the so-called "Arab Spring" (May 19, 2011):

"There are times in the course of history when the actions of ordinary citizens spark movements for change because they speak to a longing for freedom that has been building up for years. In America, think of the defiance of those patriots in Boston who refused to pay taxes to a King, or the dignity of Rosa Parks as she sat courageously in her seat."

The "Arab Spring" was the brutal rise of political Islam in the Middle East and this is what Obama compares the Civil Rights Movement to?

The Fundamental Argument:

The progressive movement, and the activist base of the Democratic Party, creates and supports venues that demonize and defame the Jewish state, thereby also creating hatred toward the Jewish people.

Such venues include political journals, such as, but not limited to, Daily Kos, the Huffington Post, and the UK Guardian, numerous universities throughout the United States and Europe, various NGOs with an anti-Israel agenda, and the entire progressive-left movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction (BDS) the Jewish people of the state of Israel.

These venues and organizations do not generally criticize Israel, but dehumanize that country.

For this reason, among others, the progressive movement, and the activist base of the Democratic Party, undermines the well-being and safety of Jews around the world, sometimes resulting in violence toward us.

Therefore, as a matter of common sense and basic human decency, Jews should leave the progressive movement and the Democratic Party as we seek to build alternative political structures that are not home to toxic anti-Semitic anti-Zionists, who would see us robbed of self-determination and self-defense.

What You Can't Discuss:

This is a partial list of taboo topics within progressive-left venues around the Arab-Israel conflict. You cannot discuss this material because it undermines the "Palestinian narrative" of perpetual victimhood. This narrative is a club used by the Arab and Muslim enemies of Israel, along with their western progressive allies, to delegitimize that country in preparation for its eventual dissolution.

1) The centuries of Jewish dhimmitude under the boot of Islamic imperialism.

2) The recent construction of Palestinian identity, its connection to Soviet Cold War politics, and how this is an Arab people with a Roman name that refers to Greeks.

3) Arab and Palestinian Koranically-based racism as the fundamental source of the conflict.

4) The ways in which contemporary progressive anti-Zionism serves as a cloak for gross anti-Semitism.

5) The Palestinian theft and appropriation of Jewish history.

6) "Pallywood."

7) The historical connections between the Nazis, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Palestinian national movement.

8) The perpetual refusal of the Palestinian-Arabs to accept a state for themselves in peace next to the Jewish one.

9) The progressive portrayal of terrorists as those fighting a righteous war of "resistance."

10) The Arab-Palestinian indoctrination of children with Jew hatred.

11) Human rights violations against women, children, and Gay people in the Muslim Middle East.

12) The fact that violent Jihadis call themselves "Jihadis" and claim to love death above life.

This is only a partial list, so please let us know the many more that we are missing.

Quote of the Whenever:

It is not that most progressives are anti-Semitic. They aren't. It's that they don't get it, they don't care, and they very much want you to shut the fuck up. - Michael Lumish